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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28312872">Endings (Over and Over and Over Again)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Her_Madjesty/pseuds/Her_Madjesty'>Her_Madjesty</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Swan Lake &amp; Related Fandoms, Лебединое озеро - Чайковский | Swan Lake - Tchaikovsky</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, alternative endings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 15:53:39</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,402</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28312872</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Her_Madjesty/pseuds/Her_Madjesty</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>One story, seven different endings.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Odette/Odile, Odette/Prints Siegfried | Prince Siegfried (Lebedínoye Ózero | Swan Lake), Odette/Von Rothbart (Lebedínoye Ózero | Swan Lake)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Endings (Over and Over and Over Again)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinuspinea/gifts">pinuspinea</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Merry Christmas, pinuspinea! Apologies for any glaring errors; it's 5am. Thank you so much for the marvelous Swan Lake fanfiction you've written over this past year; it's been a pleasure to read. Your creativity honestly knows no bounds, and you've written things that are going to live with me forever.</p><p>Now, this fic is written in the style of a Chaucerian format as proposed by anghraine on Tumblr. Each of the seven sections is composed of seven sentences, as proposed in the original challenge, issued <a href="https://anghraine.tumblr.com/post/145320294168/chaucer-meme">here</a>. Go forth noting that every ending is based off of some manner of interpretation as presented by a ballet; I'll link an applicable video compilation <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuHI30slv6A&amp;t=147s">here</a>.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="western">I. Together</p><p class="western"> </p><p class="western">The swan maidens greet her by the lake, their black and white feathers as spotless as the day Rothbart summoned them up from the lake weed and the blood Odette left behind in one of her first attempts at drowning. They cushion her as she cries, comfort her as she comes back to herself, stand with her as the magician stares out across the lake, separated from them by that unforgiving body of water.</p><p class="western">They part like waves when Siegfried comes for her, his eyes bloodshot and his hands shaking around the base of his crossbow.</p><p class="western">And Odette –</p><p class="western">opens her arms to him; welcomes him into her nest; lets him weep on her shoulder as he begs her forgiveness.</p><p class="western">Across the lake, Rothbart watches.</p><p class="western">His intervention is child’s play; magic meant to distract, not harm. When Siegfried’s bolt pierces his heart, Odette screams, but she does not go to him; instead, she watches the magician fall, then dissolve into nothing but feathers, the remnants of exhaustion (tears?) in his eyes.</p><p class="western"> </p><p class="western">II. Apart</p><p class="western"> </p><p class="western">By the time Siegfried arrives at the lake, it is too late.</p><p class="western">Odette retreats among her swan maidens when she arrives, her wings bent in the wrong directions, her head low, her crown slipping. The swan maidens sense the movement of a wizard on the horizon and welcome her into their bower – her bower – their bower, the oldest of them already in mourning.</p><p class="western">Odette looks to them in those final moments, her chest heaving.</p><p class="western">In the woods, Siegfried sees an owl – a man – both – moving in the shadows; he does not hesitate before he fires.</p><p class="western">In the bower, on the lake, the swan maidens cover Odette with their wings; the oldest – if they can be called the oldest, these creatures made out of Odette’s memories and pond scum – use wings that may as well be fists, be stones, be swords and relieve her of her pain.</p><p class="western">Rothbart dies with a swan’s cry on his lips, staring upward without seeing the sky; Siegfried stands over his body and does not see the swan queen; cannot, for her body is gone, as are the swan maidens who swore to protect her.</p><p class="western"> </p><p class="western">III. Together (Again)</p><p class="western"> </p><p class="western">The swan maidens do not work quickly enough. Rothbart falls, does not see the stars; the swans disappear, but Odette shivers, shudders – breathes.</p><p class="western">Siegfried sees her, half-human, half-swan, sitting on the edge of the shore with blood soaking those white feathers.</p><p class="western">He gathers her to his chest in her final moments and presses kisses into her hair; presses apologies into the skin that only Rothbart could knit back together.</p><p class="western">Odette dies with the stars in her eyes; with Siegfried’s tears in her hair.</p><p class="western">Siegfried follows her down. As the moon rises overhead, he walks her into the center of the lake; binds his shirt up over his head; sinks and sinks and sinks while her body floats above his, as though she is meant for heaven while he is meant for hell.</p><p class="western"> </p><p class="western">IV. Together (Breaking)</p><p class="western"> </p><p class="western">Siegfried does not make it out of the castle; Rothbart’s spell not only stops him but sends him sprawling backwards, where he cracks his head at his mother’s feet and dies to the sound of her screaming.</p><p class="western">Odette, when she runs to the lake, finds no swans but rather the wizard himself, still slightly feathered and with his hands covered in blood.</p><p class="western">She does not care.</p><p class="western">She throws herself into his arms and weeps; weeps like her heart is breaking; weeps like there is no singular black swan watching her from the midst of the reeds where she cannot ever be seen.</p><p class="western">Rothbart gathers her in his arms and holds her close; whisks her away to his castle, then beyond, where news of the kingdom’s decline and the lake’s dredging and the castle’s razing cannot hurt her.</p><p class="western">Years pass – and they move as they do, for all kingdoms need a court sorcerer, and Rothbart is the best; he can bring them gold and silver and power and queens but never his; never the woman in white who walks at his side (there are tears in her eyes, yes, but before long there is magic at her fingertips, too – it proceeds the returning warmth to her cheeks and the fullness to her form but not the glimmer in his eye or the thundering of his heart).</p><p class="western">(Her spell breaks before they have a chance to realize what they’ve become, but even then, neither one of the mind all that much.)</p><p class="western"> </p><p class="western">V. Together (Bleeding)</p><p class="western"> </p><p class="western">And what of the darkest of swans, Odette’s double, the woman Siegfried swears to marry?</p><p class="western">She stands on the steps of the palace, waiting for her prince to return home. When the sun rises in the morning, he does just that – Odette’s blood on his hands and Rothbart’s arm linked with his.</p><p class="western">Odile welcomes him to her breast and lets him weep, this young man; this heartbroken folly; and he takes her in his arms and wonders if he could snap her neck (as if she cannot know his thoughts; as if her maker is not at his back, the metaphorical knife and the fate of a kingdom binding his hands).</p><p class="western">They marry within two weeks. Siegfried goes in black, borrowing one of Rothbart’s cloaks to hide the way that his hands shake at the altar; Odile sneaks back to the edge of that lake and borrows – claims – the diadem that rests half-covered in mud; the emblem of the swan queen.</p><p class="western">Siegfried goes still when she makes her way down the aisle (and Odile knows that she has played her part well, for he still does not know if he made the wrong choice; he thinks he looks at Odette here in this empty box called “church”; and it is that confusion that carries her long into her adulthood; that makes her willfully blind to the way Rothbart’s eyes drift over her face and out towards a lake in the woods where no swans swim anymore.)</p><p class="western"> </p><p class="western">VI. Together (Healing)</p><p class="western"> </p><p class="western">They meet on the steps of the prince’s castle; one dressed in black, the other naked save for her feathers. Odile looks at Odette, sees her not a step out of the nearby woods and bids her maker adieu; goes running for the Queen of the Swans with something – unclear; hateful, loving, burning in her chest.</p><p class="western">Odette pleads her case.</p><p class="western">Odile considers her options.</p><p class="western">And three months later, the kingdom will recover from that night’s disarray – from the strange storm that broke out on the palace steps; from the death of a resident wizard and the mother of the attending monarch. Several towns over, two women will walk hand in hand. They will buy fish in the morning and apples after noon; they will disappear behind home-sewn curtains at the same hour the sun sets; they will laugh and press their heads together in the street, one always dressed in white and the other dressed in red; and there will be no darkness between them, only some simmering something, living and breathing as though it is some third thing, some child, some kinship that flourishes when their palms kiss one another.</p><p class="western"> </p><p class="western">VII. Apart (Reprising)</p><p class="western"> </p><p class="western">In the ballroom, she watches Siegfried press his lips to Odile’s knuckles, and her heart does not break. Instead, her eyes meet Rothbart’s from across that golden room.</p><p class="western">Before the same song has ended, Odette turns –</p><p class="western">and walks away; walks down the steps, past the carriage drive; out and out and out, until she’s passed even the lake where she’s spent these past dozen or so years.</p><p class="western">She walks until her feet can carry her no further and then even a little beyond that, until the glow of her life’s past kingdom fades into nothing but a smear on the horizon. Odette moves until she has to beg a ride from a merchant; meets his wife; finds comfort in the both of them; helps raise a child that is not her own but could be, if you look at him in the right light.</p><p class="western">And in the kingdom behind her, a court wizard rises to power; a prince dies, and his wife comes to take his seat on that vacant throne. But in this kingdom – a kingdom made of inn rooms and campsites and always, always the road, Odette walks alongside strangers she loves and makes pillows out of swan feathers to carry her ever onward.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Edit, 4/10/21: I'm now on Twitter! Come and find me and my various other platforms <a href="https://twitter.com/HMadjesty">here.</a></p></blockquote></div></div>
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